Wednesday, October 11, 2017



Christian activists booted from Seattle coffee shop: ‘I’m gay. You have to leave’

The bullied have become the bullies.  And the foul-mouthed owner reveals what a sewer his mind is

A Christian pro-life group that was recently ejected from a Seattle coffee shop over its local activism is attracting hundreds of thousands of Facebook views after footage of the encounter was posted online.

Members of Abolish Human Abortion recently decided to order drinks in Seattle’s Bedlam coffee shop after posting and distributing pro-life pamphlets in the local community.

Activists who joined Caleb Head and Caytie Davis on Oct. 1 were soon berated and told the leave when they were identified.  “I’m gay. You have to leave,” owner Ben Borgman said in the video.

“Are you denying us service?” Mr. Davis asked.

“I am. Yeah,” Mr. Borgman replied.

The confrontation about tolerance then escalated when activist Jonathan Sutherland was asked if he would watch a sex act. “If I go get my boyfriend and f- him in the a— right here you’re going to tolerate that?” Mr. Borgman asked.

“That would be your choice,” Mr. Sutherland said, the conservative website Red State reported Friday.

“Are you going to tolerate it? Answer my f-ing question! No, you’re going to sit right here and f-ing watch it! […] Well then I don’t have to f-ing tolerate this! Leave! All of you. Tell all your f-ing friends, don’t f-ing come here.”

A request by the activists to turn to Jesus was met with the response, “Yeah, I like a—. I’m not going to be saved by anything. I’d f- Christ in the a—. OK? He’s hot.”

The Bedlam coffee shop issued responses on Oct. 2 and Oct. 4 asking viewers to consider another side of the story. “In the end, it’s all about context,” the owner wrote. “Everything is context. Out of context a comment can serve any argument.

Take for example the phrase ‘I will bring my boyfriend out here and f- him in the a—.’ out of context it could mean a slew of things. It’s delivery in this case was meant to shock and repulse the audience. Out of context it could be labeled a perversion, or a kink depending how you personally couch the subject. In context it was a response, a response to being shocked and repulsed. A revenge you could even call it, a weakness demonstrated in the typical, they hurt me, I will hurt them fashion.”

The 52-year-old owner said that his full exchange with the activists included one of the activists denying that graphic anti-abortion materials were their own.

Mr. Borgman also said that anti-abortion imagery was hidden within his shop.

“They were ready with that camera,” the owner wrote. “I was baptized Catholic, Roman Catholic actually, I’ve been to a few bible studies, read the entire book, more than once. To my understanding, and to speak in the religious vernacular; these people are working for Satan. The great trickster has deluded them into believing that hate is love, that rage is peace, and that lies are truth.

The God I knew, the Jesus I was taught about would absolutely never ever print a poster with a hideous dead baby representation at ‘what was clearly meant to insinuate’ at the hands of gays … suffice to the say the poster was gross, and the text on the back? Holy cow, whoever wrote that is in a lot of pain. I spoke to them in their own language.”

SOURCE





The Truth About Cristoforo Colombo

Is this the last time we can celebrate Columbus Day? A wave of cities have decided to remove the holiday from the calendar and replace it with “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer credited with discovering America, and his legacy are under attack figuratively and, increasingly, literally.

Several Columbus monuments have been attacked and vandalized around the country. The towering Columbus statue at Columbus Circle in New York City now needs 24-hour guards after Mayor Bill de Blasio put it on the list of a commission to review “offensive” memorials.

And according to Far Left Watch, a watchdog organization, Antifa and other left-wing groups plan to deface and attack Columbus statues across the country on Columbus Day.

It is unfortunate to see what was once a uniting figure—who represented American courage, optimism, and even immigrants—is suddenly in the crosshairs for destruction. We owe it to Columbus and ourselves to be more respectful of the man who made the existence of our country possible.

Once Revered, Now Maligned

A few historians and activists began to attack Columbus’ legacy in the late 20th century. They concocted a new narrative of Columbus as a rapacious pillager and a genocidal maniac.

Far-left historian Howard Zinn, in particular, had a huge impact on changing the minds of a generation of Americans about the Columbus legacy. Zinn not only maligned Columbus, but attacked the larger migration from the Old World to the new that he ushered in.

It wasn’t just Columbus who was a monster, according to Zinn, it was the driving ethos of the civilization that ultimately developed in the wake of his discovery: the United States.

“Behind the English invasion of North America,” Zinn wrote, “behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private profit.”

The truth is that Columbus set out for the New World thinking he would spread Christianity to regions where it didn’t exist. While Columbus, and certainly his Spanish benefactors, had an interest in the goods and gold he could return from what they thought would be Asia, the explorer’s primary motivation was religious.

“This conviction that God destined him to be an instrument for spreading the faith was far more potent than the desire to win glory, wealth, and worldly honors,” wrote historian Samuel Eliot Morison over a half-century ago.

In fact, as contemporary historian Carol Delaney noted, even the money Columbus sought was primarily dedicated to religious purposes. Delaney said in an interview with the Catholic fraternal organization the Knights of Columbus:

Everybody knows that Columbus was trying to find gold, but they don’t know what the gold was for: to fund a crusade to take Jerusalem back from the Muslims before the end of the world. A lot of people at the time thought that the apocalypse was coming because of all the signs: the plague, famine, earthquakes, and so forth. And it was believed that before the end, Jerusalem had to be back in Christian hands so that Christ could return in judgment.

Columbus critics don’t just stop at accusing him of greed. One of the biggest allegations against him is that he waged a genocidal war and engaged in acts of cruelty against indigenous people in the Americas.

But historians like Delaney have debunked these claims.

Rather than cruel, Columbus was mostly benign in his interaction with native populations. While deprivations did occur, Columbus was quick to punish those under his command who committed unjust acts against local populations.

“Columbus strictly told the crew not to do things like maraud, or rape, and instead to treat the native people with respect,” Delaney said. “There are many examples in his writings where he gave instructions to this effect. Most of the time when injustices occurred, Columbus wasn’t even there. There were terrible diseases that got communicated to the natives, but he can’t be blamed for that.”

Columbus certainly wasn’t a man without flaws or attitudes that would be unacceptable today.

But even as a man of an earlier age in which violence and cruelty were often the norm between different cultures and people, Columbus did not engage in the savage acts that have been pinned on him.

How Americans Once Viewed Columbus

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, most Americans were taught about Columbus’ discovery of the New World in school.

“In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue … ” went a popular poem about the Italian explorer who flew under the Spanish flag. At one time, Americans marveled at what seemed like an unbelievably courageous voyage across unknown waters with the limited tools and maps of the 15th century.

It is difficult in the 21st century to imagine what Columbus faced as he crossed the Atlantic in search of what he thought was a route to Asia. The hardship and danger was immense. If things went awry, there would be nothing to save his little flotilla besides hope, prayer, and a little courage.

Most people, even in the 1490s, knew that the Earth was round. However, Columbus made a nevertheless history-altering discovery.

The world was a much bigger place than most had imagined, and though Columbus never personally realized the scope of his discovery, he opened up a new world that would one day become a forefront of human civilization.

This is the man and the history that earlier generations of Americans came to respect and admire.

Unfortunately, Zinn and others’ caricature of Columbus and American civilization has stuck and in an era in which radicals and activists search the country for problematic statues to destroy, Columbus is a prime target.

Ku Klux Klan Pushed Anti-Columbus Rhetoric

Much of the modern rhetoric about Columbus mirrors attacks lobbed at him in the 19th century by anti-Catholic and anti-Italian groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

In fact, Columbus Day became a nationally celebrated holiday following a mass lynching of Italians in New Orleans—the largest incident of lynching in American history.

In 1892—the 400th anniversary of the Columbus voyage—President Benjamin Harrison called for a national celebration of Columbus and his achievements. Americans patriotically celebrated Columbus and erected numerous statues in his honor as the country embraced him.

Though American appreciation of Columbus deepened, some groups weren’t pleased.

As the pro-Columbus website The Truth About Columbus points out, the Ku Klux Klan worked to stop Columbus Day celebrations, smash statues, and reverse his growing influence on American culture.

According to The Truth About Columbus, in the 1920s, the Klan “attempted to remove Columbus Day as a state holiday in Oregon,” burned a cross “to disturb a Columbus Day celebration in Pennsylvania,” and successfully “opposed the erection of a statue of Columbus in Richmond, Virginia, only to see the decision to reject the statue reversed.”

Attempts to quash Columbus failed, but they have re-emerged in our own time through the actions of far-left groups who want to see his legacy buried and diminished forever.

This would be a tragic loss for our generation and those of the future.

The bravery and boldness that Columbus displayed in his trek to America have been inherent in the American cultural DNA from the beginning.

We may never have the class, the taste, the sophistication of the Old World upper crust. But what we do have is a reverence for simple virtues of strength, boldness, and a willingness to push the envelope to secure for ourselves a better future than those who’ve come before.

We are a civilization that admires those who push the limits of the frontier, who don’t merely accept what is and want something more. The spirit that drove us west and in modernity, to the moon, is what we celebrate in men like Columbus.

President Ronald Reagan said it best in a Columbus Day tribute:

Columbus is justly admired as a brilliant navigator, a fearless man of action, a visionary who opened the eyes of an older world to an entirely new one. Above all, he personifies a view of the world that many see as quintessentially American: not merely optimistic, but scornful of the very notion of despair.

When we have lost these things, when we no longer have the capacity to celebrate men like Columbus, as imperfect as they sometimes were, we will have lost what has made us great, and distinct.

SOURCE






Girl Raised Gender Neutral Grows Up To Be A Woman

There is a new trend in social justice parenting (yes some do reproduce), that is to raise their children gender neutral. This is extension of their belief that gender is a social construct or that gender is fluid.

It is a concept that is reflect in Australia with introduction of programs such as Safe Schools and Respectful Relationships. Every year we also experience No Gender December pushed by former Greens Senator Larissa Waters.

But what is the end result of such an approach to parenting? After all the effort to raise a child without having them dress or behave in a gendered way? Even though it is a relatively new phenomena one girl who was raised gender neutral is now 16 and identifies as woman. What a shocking development.

Royce and Jessica James with their daughter Isis reflected on the experience raising her gender neutral in an appearance on the United States’ National Public Radio. Listening to it is painful for those who value freedom and the innocence of children.

Royce and Jessica describe the lengths they went to not have Isis display she was a girl at all. They discuss how they were triggered by midwives dressing her in pink at the hospital “Somebody nearby turned and looked at my baby in my arms, my little pink baby doll and said, ‘Oh, she’s so precious and delicate and dainty,’ and I was enraged”.

But that was nothing compared to how they treated family and friends who want to give girl presents to Isis “We had family who were sending us dresses for Isis [that we weren’t using] and the family members’ feelings were really hurt”.

Then there was the personal impact on poor Isis who had to endure a childhood being a social experiment of her social justice parents “A little boy wanted her to take her clothes off and prove that she’s a girl on the playground because she has short hair and she’s wearing primary colours and doesn’t look like a girl”.

You can also tell that Isis herself does not think she had a great childhood when she confesses “It was sometimes painful to be raised in a gender-neutral way because I had to tell people that I wasn’t a boy” adding “Sometimes people wouldn’t believe me when I said that I wasn’t able, especially children which was ridiculous”,

Despite Royce and Jessica confessing “there are those moments that we think, ‘OK is this something that we created’” they have no regrets and have gone onto have three more children who are also being raised gender neutral.

Of course, the fact that a child born a girl (or as they left say assigned female at birth) grows up to women does not surprise ordinary people. The fact that 99.7% of people grow up to identify as the gender they are biologically shows that assigning gender based on genitalia is a pretty accurate method.

There have also been countless psychological studies of children’s behaviour which show that boys gravitate towards blue and trucks and girls gravitate towards pink and dolls. The reason this occurs is not because it is forced upon them but because it is what they naturally enjoy playing with. Not to mention that men and women’s brains have found to function differently. Royce and Jessica claim they gave their daughter freedom, but it sounds more like she was prevented for engaging in any behaviour that was deemed to be gendered.

They also forget there has never been any written law that says that boys and girls must only do gendered things. Many girls play contact sports and boys dance as an example. The reason why we have boys and girls’ sections at toy stores for example is to reflect thousands of years observing the difference in behaviour of boys and girls and the consumer choices they make.

The bad news is that Isis’ experience is only the beginning, we will sadly see more grown children in the future have the same bad experience at being raised gender neutral and not being allowed by their parents to engage in activities which they would naturally enjoy. Let children be children and if a boy wants to do boy things and a girl wants to do girl things there is no need for anyone to be triggered buy it and to feel the need correct it.

SOURCE





When Hannah Scherlacher found her name on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s LGBTQ hate list, she called to ask why

“I have never said or done anything to indicate hate for the LGBTQ community,” Scherlacher wrote in Fox News. “When I called to inquire, SPLC informed me that I am guilty because I did a radio interview with Family Research Council Radio. … The segment was about socialism, but because FRC holds traditional family values, I was labeled an LGBT-hater just for being a guest on the show. No LGBT topics even came-up.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a nonprofit that claims to “fight hate” and “teach tolerance.” One of the ways it does this is by creating “hate lists,” such as the one Scherlacher found herself on. But featured on those lists are traditional, pro-family values groups such as the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom, which are far from hateful.

Scherlacher isn’t standing for this categorization. She’s speaking out, which is why in this week’s edition of “Problematic Women,” we crown her “Problematic Woman of the Week.”

Every week, The Daily Signal’s “Problematic Women” shines a spotlight on strong conservative women, current events, and the hypocrisy of the “feminist” left. Co-hosted with Bre Payton of The Federalist, this week’s episode also takes on Hillary Clinton’s reaction to the Las Vegas mass shooting, the 45-foot “Naked Lady” statue feminists want to put up on the National Mall, and more.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here.

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